American Murder: The Family Next Door revealed a lot about the Chris Watts case, which centered
around the disappearance and murders of Shanann Watts and her two young children, Bella and
Celeste. Here's everything we learned while watching the devastating true crime story
play out.
The Family Next Door quickly brings viewers into the world of the Watts family, thanks
in a huge part to pictures, posts, and videos from Shanann Watts' social media pages. After
introducing the mother of two and her family, the documentary drops a bombshell on viewers:
In May of 2018, Shanann revealed to her husband, Chris Watts, that she was pregnant with their
third child.
While that might be good news under other circumstances, that detail is quite unsettling
in a true crime documentary - especially because it's obvious from the start that Shannan and
her kids would never get to meet the fifth member of their family.
Chris Watts' reaction to the news of Shanann's pregnancy seems to be happy, according to
the video she made of the reveal.
"Really?"
"Really."
"That's awesome."
Sadly, that baby would never get the chance to come into the world.
Although Chris and Shanann Watts were expecting their third child together, that didn't stop
Chris from starting an affair with a co-worker just a few months after learning his wife
was pregnant. The Family Next Door delves into their secret relationship by examining
texts, photos, and other documentation of the affair.
Chris Watts and his mistress, Nichol Kessinger, apparently got serious about each other in
June of 2018, a month after Shanann's pregnancy reveal and two months before the murder of
her and her children. It didn't take long after that for Chris to fall in love with
Kessinger, as evidenced by his Google history, which included searches like "When to say
I love you for the first time in a new relationship" and "How does it feel when someone says I
love you."
Kessinger was just as serious about the romance as Chris; two months after they started dating,
she was looking at wedding dresses online.
While Nichol Kessinger could have been a villain in the dark story of the Watts family, she
appeared to be just as in the dark about who Chris Watts was as everyone else. For starters,
Chris lied to Kessinger about his marital status from the start, telling her that he
was in the process of separating from Shanann. Additionally, Kessinger revealed that Chris
wasn't wearing a wedding band when they first met.
"He did inform me that he had two daughters, um, he also told me that he was currently
in the process of a separation from his wife, and that's how it started."
However, it wasn't until Shanann and her children's disappearances that Kessinger found out that
not only was Chris still married, but that he was expecting a third child with his wife.
Upon learning the truth, Kessinger wondered what else he had lied about, and she suspected
that he had something to do with his wife's disappearance. At that point, Kessinger made
the difficult decision to go to the FBI.
While the Watts family continued to look totally happy on social media, a darker story was
playing out behind the scenes. As Chris Watts' affair with Nichol Kessinger progressed, cracks
were forming in the foundation of the Watts' marriage.
On June 27, 2018, Shanann Watts traveled to North Carolina with her two daughters for
a five-week vacation, while Chris stayed behind, ostensibly to work. However, during the entire
month of July, he repeatedly saw Kessinger for dates and failed to communicate much with
his wife. Naturally, Shanann grew suspicious that something was going on, as he was missing
her calls, being distant, and, in general, seeming distracted.
By the time Chris joined Shanann and the kids in North Carolina at the end of July, Shanann
was having serious conflicts with both her husband and her in-laws. At that time and
into the next month, Shanann confided in her friends that Chris was acting like a stranger.
She even ended up canceling the baby's gender reveal because Chris seemed cold as ice during
the ultrasound.
Despite Chris Watts' infidelity and cold behavior, it's clear in The Family Next Door that Shanann
Watts loved her husband and truly believed their marriage was worth saving. This was
in spite of the fact that he was refusing intimacy, declined couples counseling, and
told Shanann that he didn't want to have their baby anymore. That had to be jarring for Shanann,
especially considering things seemingly went downhill in the short span of just six weeks.
For as dismal as things seemed, Shanann held onto the hope that things could improve. On
August 9, 2018, she texted a friend and told her that Chris was acting a bit more like
himself again and that they'd had their "best talk yet." So when she left for a short business
trip in Arizona the next day, she was working on a letter to give to her husband, revealed
through texts to her supportive friends.
Yet even as Shanann was still desperately trying to save their marriage, Chris Watts
continued his courtship of Kessinger. Ignoring both his wife's messages and his young daughters,
Chris hired a babysitter so he could see Nichol Kessinger while Shanann was away.
Specifically, Chris took Kessinger to The Lazy Dog Sports Bar and Grill in Erie, Colorado.
There, Chris spent a total of $60 on food and drinks, which he charged to a card that
he shared with his wife - a suspicious amount of money for a man who was supposedly dining
alone.
That outing is what finally tipped Shanann off to the fact that Chris was cheating on
her. She did an internet search for the restaurant's menu, likely trying to figure out what he
ordered, and how it could have cost that much. The only way it added up was if someone else
was there with him, making a confrontation about his behavior basically inevitable.
On August 13, 2018, Shanann Watts and her two daughters, Bella and Celeste, went missing.
And while viewers of The Family Next Door knew it was coming, it was still an especially
difficult moment in the documentary, since viewers knew exactly who would end up being
convicted of ending their lives.
The first person to suspect that something terrible had happened was Shanann's friend
Nickole Atkinson, who picked her up at the airport after she returned from Arizona. After
dropping Shanann off at home at nearly 2 a.m. that morning, Atkinson called the police when
she couldn't get a hold of her friend later that day.
"My name's Nickole, and I'm calling because I'm concerned about a friend of mine."
Shanann also missed a doctor's appointment, which was completely out of character for
her, especially at 15 weeks pregnant.
Atkinson met officers at the Watts' residence that afternoon, and, with Chris Watts' permission,
the authorities searched for the house for evidence of what happened to Shanann. While
they found her purse, medication, and phone, there was no sign of Shanann or her two daughters.
It was the beginning of the end: Shanann Watts was officially missing, and Chris was beginning
to act suspiciously.
When authorities asked Chris Watts where his wife and children were, he didn't have much
to say about it. He said only that they'd gone to a friend's house, after he'd told
Shanann he wanted a separation in the hours after she got back home. However, when pressed,
he revealed that he didn't know the friend's name, or any other details about where she
might have gone.
A neighbor also told the police that Chris Watts' behavior on the morning of his family's
disappearance was strange and out-of-character, with some unusual activity being caught on
the neighbor's security camera. Chris claimed that he spent the morning just preparing to
go to work as usual, but he'd later confess to spending the morning killing his family
and hiding their bodies.
That evening, Chris made a plea on a local television station, asking his family to come
home.
"We had an emotional conversation, I'll leave it at that. But I just want them back."
While his words sounded emotional, it wasn't lost on viewers how restrained he looked and
sounded.
When Nichol Kessinger saw the Watts family on the news, she realized that Chris Watts
had lied about everything. He wasn't actually separated from his wife, and was in fact expecting
another child with her. But rather than try to cover for him, or assume that he was innocent,
Kessinger tried to get to the bottom of things.
After texting Chris to see what he had to say about the disappearances, Kessinger knew
something was up. Speaking later to the Denver Post, she said,
"It got to a point that he was telling me so many lies that I eventually told him that
I did not want to speak to him again until his family was found."
She added that she would do anything she could to help find Shanann Watts and her two young
daughters.
After checking the news on August 15, 2018, in the hopes that Shanann had been found,
Kessinger finally went to the authorities. She would go on to become one of the most
critical people in the investigation of the disappearance of Shanann, Celeste, and Bella
Watts.
After Nichol Kessinger told the authorities what she knew, authorities learned that Chris
Watts had lied about cheating on his wife, which was the vital information they needed
to make a break in the case. That's when the cops gave Chris a polygraph test, asking if
he knew what had happened to Shanann Watts and their children. Of course, he failed,
claiming that he never cheated and had absolutely no idea what had happened to them. That's
when officers began to question him in earnest.
In a particularly heinous twist, Chris confessed to strangling his wife, but tried to blame
the murders of their daughters on her. He claimed that he killed her after he discovered
that she'd strangled their two young girls, acting out of grief and rage at what he said
she'd done.
Of course, it was plainly obvious to investigators that Shanann had no motive for killing her
children. At that point, the police became pretty convinced that they'd found their man.
On August 15, 2018, authorities arrested Chris Watts for the murder of Shanann, Bella, and
Celeste Watts. The next day, they recovered their bodies based on Chris' confession, in
which he told police where he'd hidden them all. Shanann was buried in a shallow grave
at his job site, and their daughters' bodies were found inside of oil tanks on the same
site.
Five days later, Chris was arraigned as Shanann's family tearfully looked on. At that point,
he was charged with a host of crimes, including five counts of first-degree murder, with each
of the children counting twice due to their young age and the fact that their father was
in a position of trust. Watts was also charged with three counts of tampering with a dead
body, and one count of unlawful termination of a pregnancy.
It wasn't until November 6, 2018 that Chris pleaded guilty to all of the charges against
him, in a deal that would take the death penalty off of the table, and leave him in prison
for the rest of his life.
So what really happened on the night that Shanann Watts and her two young daughters,
Bella and Celeste Watts, were killed? It wasn't until after Chris Watts' sentencing that he
opened up about all of the gory details.
Though he finally admitted to murdering his children during his trial in 2018, in February
of 2019, Chris told three investigators everything that happened. He claimed that after fighting
with Shanann, he snapped and strangled her to death after she threatened to take his
children away from him if he left her. Things were so loud that young Bella reportedly walked
in and asked what was going on. After that, Chris said he put his wife's body in his truck,
strapped in his young daughters, and drove to his job site. There, he buried his wife,
then smothered their two young children and threw their bodies into an oil barrel.
For his horrific crimes, Chris was sentenced to five life sentences without the possibility
of parole, with three to be served consecutively and two concurrently, ensuring that he'll
spend the rest of his life behind bars.